God is an autocrat who demands obedience to his law - such is the received wisdom of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. However, Christianity adds a more gentle note. The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that God exists in three persons, three equal partners, and that God was prepared, in the person of Christ, to suffer the worst that human beings can inflict on one another, in order to rescue us from our own self-centred ways. If by democracy we mean a sense of the equal value of all people, so that all are worthy to be saved, I would count this as a clear proof of God's democratic credentials, or at least of his recognition that humility is a supreme virtue, more important than any ostentatious obedience to the law.

Roger Scruton is a journalist and research professor at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, Virginia.

It depends which one. Going back a little, Zeus makes an attempt at consulting his colleagues on Olympus, listens (sometimes) to their representations on behalf of their constituents (Aphrodite pleading for Helen, Paris, and Troy), but ultimately he's a Big Daddy Don, and the other gods and goddesses the first crime family.

Jehovah? Doesn't grasp the principles of inclusiveness, consultation, or racial and gender equality.

Jesus? Some aspects of his example and his teachings are democratic: his warm acceptance of Mary Magdalene, his anti-racist support for the Samaritan, his separation of church and state. Historically, Christianity has joined forces with and sometimes originated many egalitarian and progressive movements, many active and effective campaigns (civil rights for blacks in US); certain groups or churches or sects even continue to uphold the gospels' opposition to inequalities of wealth, greed, ostentation, Pharisee lip service, and religious excess and intolerance.

A sharper way of putting the question might be to ask: "Do believers today ever claim God is not democratic, or even might be anti-democratic?" The women who have been demonstrating in Pakistan for the establishment of sharia law are exercising a rather new, characteristically democratic right for women to gather and express their wishes in the public arena, so they must to some extent believe that the God they follow is on the side of such activities. More generally, a hideous feature of political hypocrisy has become endemic all over the contemporary power map: the interests of regimes are presented as moral ideals, and these in turn conflated with religious teachings and given ballast by claims to divine approval, even guidance.

As gods go, Christ has democratic tendencies. But his followers mostly honour them in the breach.

As one of humanity's most imperious creations, God is profoundly undemocratic. In his incarnation within American fundamentalism, the Big Other permits the enjoyment of a universe of perverse, destructive pleasures. Messianic Protestantism, predicated on the Book of Revelation and infused with evangelical moralism, encourages a notion of unending war without any sense of accountability. In fundamentalist Protestant circles today, conversion narratives posit the self as the ultimate source of authenticity, above and beyond any democratic collective. The suffering "other" is cheapened in the ecstatic individualistic confrontation with divinity. Like that other "talking cure", prayer enables purification from those irrepressible violent urges.

All false gods are tyrannical. If God is the sublime totality of everything then he is changeable - as is true democracy, so yes God is democratic. The innate democratic nature of God is witnessed by the fact that mankind, for the last 5000 years, has felt the need to create hierarchies, literally "sacred ruler systems" and dogmas; pecking orders that mean only the favoured few can appear to be close to God or comprehend him.

Bettany Hughes is a cultural and social historian, writer and television presenter.

Possibly, but his spokespeople are dictators. A good example of the benefits of dictatorship, in that you know precisely who you have to worship, and what you have to do to remain safe. This might be a type of freedom we shouldn't underestimate - once upon a time we lived knowing we were in step with the whole culture around us. Now any belief you hold will only see you admitted to a relatively small group, and myriad other groups will bitterly oppose you. We ever-shrinking units now spend much of our time conceiving immune systems for nominal individual ways of life.

DBC Pierre is an author best known for his Booker Prize-winning novel Vernon God Little.

How do you know there's a god? If you're asking whether religion and democracy can mix, then I don't think they're easy bedfellows; if you have a religious belief that means you're answerable to some higher, supernatural authority, then that supercedes your loyalty to your rational democratic choice. There's a built in conflict between them.